Borch Foundation

The Borch Foundation is not a staffed, program-driven grantmaker — it is a personal giving vehicle for Christopher R. Borch (CFO) and Andrea W. Borch (CEO), both of whom draw $0 in compensation, meaning every dollar of a $1.9M average income and $11.3M asset base is administered directly by the family. There is no mission statement, no program description, and no grants page on file with the IRS or in Granted's database, and the foundation's own domain (borch.org) is an inactive hosting-provider placeholder page rather than a working site. This informality shapes the whole approach: proposals aren't reviewed against published criteria, they're read by the founders themselves against causes they already know. The grant history bears this out. Two relationships — Furman University ($2.25M across 4 grants, explicitly tied to 'the Borch Family Scholarship' at USC and general scholarship support at Furman) and the University of Southern California ($1,195,000 across 6 grants) — account for roughly 80% of the $4.3M tracked across 151 grants, almost certainly reflecting a founder's or family member's alma mater ties rather than a competitive scholarship program open to new applicants. Outside those two relationships, the remaining ~145 grants go to a stable, repeating roster of Silicon Valley-area human-services and animal-welfare nonprofits (Humane Society, Muttville, Habitat for Humanity, Second Harvest, Salvation Army) in amounts from $750 to $172,000 lifetime, most appearing across multiple consecutive years — evidence of loyalty to known grantees rather than active solicitation of new ones. First-time applicants should treat this as a relationship-first funder: there is no LOI-to-full-proposal-to-site-visit pipeline, no application form ('NO SPECIFIC FORM' per IRS filing), and no deadline. The realistic path in is a short, direct, unrestricted funding request mailed to the foundation's Saratoga address, ideally referencing a genuine local, alumni, or personal connection, sized to match the foundation's typical small-check behavior rather than its two outlier mega-gifts.

Total giving has been volatile and asset-driven rather than steadily growing: $639,771 (FY2019) collapsed to $189,739 (FY2020, the same year the foundation booked a $5.84M contribution and likely paused distributions), then rebounded to a peak of $1,414,486 (FY2021, aided by $3.67M in net investment income), before easing to $1,215,327 (FY2022) and $754,566 (FY2023, the most recent filed year, on $680,980 in actual grants paid). Foundation assets fell in step, from $17.36M (2021) to $12.97M (2022) to $12.22M (2023) to a current reported $11.33M — a roughly 35% decline from peak, consistent with large scholarship payouts drawing down principal faster than investment returns replace it. Per the IRS's typical-grant-size metadata, the foundation's grants range from $1,000 to $750,000 with a median of just $5,000 and an average of $39,439 — a wide gap that signals a bimodal pattern: a large cluster of small checks and a handful of outsized gifts pulling the average far above the median. That bimodal pattern is confirmed in the top-50 grantee data: Furman University ($2,250,000 lifetime, 4 grants, avg. $562,500/grant) and USC ($1,195,000 lifetime, 6 grants, avg. $199,167/grant) sit far above every other grantee. The next tier — Humane Society ($172,000/4 grants), Adventure Unlimited ($100,000/4), Muttville ($74,500/4), Habitat for Humanity ($57,500/5) — caps out well under $50,000/year, and the long tail of ~40 additional grantees runs from $750 to $32,500 lifetime, mostly in the $1,000-$10,000 range per grant, recurring annually over 4-year windows visible in the data. Across the full 151-grant sample, average grant size is $28,486 and total tracked giving is $4,301,400. Geographically, California dominates with 102 of the tracked grantee relationships (reflecting the Saratoga, CA headquarters and Silicon Valley cause focus), followed by Massachusetts (9), Colorado (9), Virginia (8), Ohio (5) and South Carolina (5) — the latter two likely tracing to Furman (SC) and university ties in VA/CO/OH.

All five peer foundations sit within roughly $10,000-$11,000 of Borch's $11.33M asset base and share its NTEE classification of 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking,' and none maintain a public website — a strong signal that this entire peer set consists of small, family-run private foundations rather than institutional grantmakers with formal programs. Unlike Borch, which at least discloses an accepting-applications posture with no deadline, none of these peers have any published application process, suggesting Borch is comparatively more approachable on paper even though its actual behavior (concentrated giving to two known university relationships plus a fixed roster of local nonprofits) is typical of this entire class of low-disclosure family foundations.

No 2025 or 2026 news coverage of the Borch Foundation could be found — web searches for the foundation's name are dominated by an unrelated, larger organization (The Albert & Elaine Borchard Foundation, a law/aging/international-education funder), and genuine Borch Foundation results are limited to nonprofit-data aggregators (Candid/Foundation Directory, GuideStar, Cause IQ, Instrumentl, Zeffy) rather than press releases or news articles. The foundation's own domain, borch.org, currently resolves to an inactive 'website under construction' placeholder page from hosting provider One.com, confirming it has no active public communications presence. The most recent verified financial activity is the FY2023 Form 990 ($754,566 total giving, $680,980 in grants paid, $12.22M total assets, filed against $10,763 in total revenue that year), with third-party aggregator Instrumentl separately citing FY2024 activity of $1,238,750 across 39 grants — a figure that could not be cross-verified against Granted's own records but is directionally consistent with the foundation's post-2020 giving band of roughly $700,000-$1.3M per year. There have been no leadership changes: Christopher R. Borch (CFO) and Andrea W. Borch (CEO) remain the foundation's only listed officers, both uncompensated, indicating continued direct family control with no program staff hired. No new grant programs, RFPs, partnerships, or public statements were identified in this research window.

There is no formal application to complete. The IRS filing explicitly lists 'NO SPECIFIC FORM' and 'NO DEADLINE,' and no application_form_url, grants_page_url, or opportunities_url exists in any public record — so do not spend time searching for an online portal. Instead, submit a short, direct, unsolicited written request by mail to 14315 Taos Dr, Saratoga, CA 95070, addressed to Christopher R. Borch or Andrea W. Borch. Given both officers are uncompensated and there is no program staff, assume the letter will be read personally by a family member rather than screened by a grants administrator — a one-page letter explaining who you are, what you do, and a specific dollar ask will travel further than a multi-page proposal packet with logic models and budgets. Size the ask realistically: the foundation's median grant is just $5,000, and the large majority of its ~150 tracked grants fall between $750 and $20,000; requests in the six-figure range have gone exclusively to the founders' own university relationships (Furman University, USC) and should not be treated as a template for a cold approach. Nearly every grant purpose on file reads simply 'UNRESTRICTED,' so frame the request as general operating or unrestricted support rather than a tightly scoped restricted-use project — this matches how the foundation actually gives. Align your cause area tightly with the three patterns visible in the data: companion-animal welfare and rescue (Humane Society, Muttville, Best Friends, Marine Mammal Center, Wildlife Center of Silicon Valley), core human services (Second Harvest, Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, West Valley Community Services, Bill Wilson Center), or youth/education (Boys & Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley, YMCA of Silicon Valley). If your organization has any genuine alumni or institutional connection to Furman University, USC, San Jose State University, or the University of Colorado, state it explicitly and early — it is the single strongest lever evident in this funder's giving history. Two phone numbers appear across public sources, (650) 365-4646 and (408) 395-5585; try both to confirm the current line before assuming either is dead. The biggest mistake applicants can make is treating this like an institutional foundation with a review committee — it behaves like a personal checkbook for causes the family already trusts, so cold outreach from organizations with no Silicon Valley presence, no animal-welfare/human-services footprint, and no university tie faces long odds regardless of how polished the proposal is. Do not expect a site visit, a multi-year pledge, or a formal rejection letter if declined.